1. Field of the Invention
The field of the invention is data processing, or, more specifically, methods, apparatus, and products for inferred discovery of a data communications device.
2. Description of Related Art
The development of the EDVAC computer system of 1948 is often cited as the beginning of the computer era. Since that time, computer systems have evolved into extremely complicated devices. Today's computers are much more sophisticated than early systems such as the EDVAC. Computer systems typically include a combination of hardware and software components, application programs, operating systems, processors, buses, memory, input/output devices, and so on. As advances in semiconductor processing and computer architecture push the performance of the computer higher and higher, more sophisticated computer software has evolved to take advantage of the higher performance of the hardware, resulting in computer systems today that are much more powerful than just a few years ago.
One of the areas in which progress has been made is in inferred discovery of a data communications device. In multiprotocol label switching, layer 3, virtual private networks (‘L3VPN’), a data communications device, such as a customer edge router is only reachable from a management module for the purpose of discovery if that management module and the customer edge router are members of the same VPN. Because it is inefficient to create a new management module for each VPN that is managed by a single entity, management modules are often members of multiple VPNs. A management module that is a member of multiple VPNs is a security risk. Another problem created by having a management module be a member of multiple VPNs is that customer edge routers in different VPNs may use the same IP address. A management module that is a member of multiple VPNs may encounter difficulty in distinguishing between data communications from two customer edge routers having the same IP address.
In addition to customer edge routers in L3 VPNs, other data communications devices are unreachable by a management module, such as, External Border Gateway Protocol (‘EBGP’) speakers in networks belonging to other providers. An EBGP speaker exchanges routing information between autonomous systems. An autonomous system is a collection of Internet Protocol networks and routers, typically under the control of a single entity, that presents a common routing policy to the internet. Attempts to discover an EGBP speaker outside of the autonomous system managed by the management module, by Internet Control Message Protocol (‘ICMP’) echo requests, for example, may be viewed by the owner of the EGBP speaker as a hostile act or a denial of service attack.